"In the words of Francis of Assisi as he met Brother Dominic on the road to Umbria, hi." –Brennan Manning

Evangelical Trump Supporters: Fix This

It is now almost two weeks since the election, and I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that 81 percent of you supported Donald Trump.

The easy way out would be to say that you are all hateful, bigoted racists. But I don’t believe that at all. At least I don’t want to.

I am sure you had your reasons for supporting Donald Trump. I don’t understand them, but if I had lived your lives, if I had lived through what you have lived through and experienced what you have experienced, I would probably be able to understand or empathize.

In all honesty, this was a very difficult election–one of the worst we’ve ever had to live through. Both candidates had very high unfavorables, and honestly I wish there was a way they both could have lost. If the Republicans had nominated a candidate who was even remotely qualified to hold the office of president, Hillary would have been dead. And if the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn’t a crook, he/she would have given Donald Trump the beatdown he oh so richly deserves.

In the end, we were left with a choice between the lesser of two evils, between the crook and the racist.

Whatever your reasons, you chose the racist.

Perhaps you were concerned about the attacks in Paris and Brussels this past year, concerned that lax immigration policies typically espoused by Democrats could lead to similar incidents here in America.

Perhaps you were concerned about the loss of American manufacturing jobs over the past few decades and the devastating impact that has had in certain parts of the country.

Perhaps you were concerned about the proliferation of government regulation which typically characterizes Democratic administrations, concerned about the impact on business and the economy.

Perhaps you were concerned about Hillary’s unwavering support of abortion.

Perhaps you were concerned about the Clinton scandals of the 90s and Hillary’s linkage with those scandals. Perhaps you were concerned about Benghazi or the email thing or the Clinton Foundation thing or a whole host of other things. You heard all the talk about Hillary (a mixture of truth, half-truths, and outright lies but that’s beside the point here), and you decided that if she was really that bad you couldn’t possibly support her.

Perhaps you were concerned about one or more of a whole host of other things that I could not list here.

But that is beside the point here. What matters at this point is that, whatever your reasons, you voted for him.

You saw him encourage his supporters to exercise violence against protesters.

You saw him ridicule a man with a physical disability.

You saw him call for Muslims to be expelled and profiled.

You saw him label the Black Lives Matter movement as criminal and subversive.

You saw him call for American soldiers to commit war crimes against suspected terrorists.

You saw him accept without reservation the endorsements of the KKK and the Neo-Nazis.

You have seen the vile, degrading things he routinely says about women.

You have seen him traffic in the most absurd conspiracy theories, to the point of insisting that our current president is a foreigner with a forged birth certificate who is illegally holding an office.

You have seen him choose a vice-president who believes that gay people can just pray away their gayness (they can’t).

You had to weigh all of this and more in order to cast your vote, and by whatever method you used you arrived at the conclusion that this was not beyond the pale, that these were things you could live with in supporting Donald Trump.

In making your choice for what you believed to be the lesser of two evils, you declared all these things and more to be within your morally acceptable parameters.

So now here we are, and everything is unfolding almost exactly as we feared.

Donald Trump is stocking his cabinet with the worst of the worst of the alt-right lunatic fringe. He has appointed a chief advisor who has made a career of spewing vile, incendiary hatred toward blacks, Jews, and Muslims. He has nominated as attorney general someone who was deemed too racist to be a federal judge.

Emboldened by Donald Trump’s win, some of his supporters have perpetrated acts of violence against blacks, Muslims, Jews, and women. Anti-Semitic graffiti is popping up all over the place, and attacks against the Muslim community are becoming commonplace. People of these communities are now concerned and fearful of what the future holds for them–and with very good reason, given what Donald Trump has said during his campaign.

Evangelicals: If you supported Donald Trump, you need to fix this. You need to speak out.

If all of these things make you sick–SAY SO!!!!!!!!! Let the world know that it is not okay with you. Let the world know that this is not your heart, that this is not who you are or what you signed up for in supporting Donald Trump.

I desperately want to believe that you believe, as I do, that all people bear the image of God, that all people are people for whom Jesus Christ died, and therefore all people are worthy of our love and care and concern.

But you have to help me. Speak out and let your voice be heard, or I will have no choice but to assume from your silence that you are okay with all of this.

I can forgive you if you voted for Donald Trump. You had to make a very difficult choice between the lesser of two evils.

What I cannot and will not forgive is your continued silence in the face of all that is going on now–the antics perpetrated by the worst of Donald Trump’s supporters, the pain and anguish of those in minority communities who fear what the future of a Donald Trump administration holds for them. By your continued silence you tell the world that you are okay with all of this, and that Jesus Christ whom you serve is okay with it too.